Diabetes in India

Over 30 million
have now been diagnosed with diabetes in India. The CPR (Crude prevalence
rate) in the urban areas of India is thought to be 9 per cent.

In rural
areas, the prevalence is approximately 3 per cent of the total population.

The population of India is now more than 1000 million: this helps to give
an idea of the scale of the problem.

The estimate of the actual number
of diabetics in India is around 40 million.

This means that India actually
has the highest number of diabetics of any one country in the entire world.
IGT (Impaired Glucose Tolerance) is also a mounting problem in India.

The
prevalence of IGT is thought to be around 8.7 per cent in urban areas and
7.9 per cent in rural areas, although this estimate may be too high. It
is thought that around 35 per cent of IGT sufferers go on to develop type
2 diabetes, so India is genuinely facing a healthcare crisis.

In India, the type of diabetes differs considerably from that in the Western
world.

Type 1 is considerably more rare, and only about 1/3 of type II
diabetics are overweight or obese.

Diabetes is also beginning to appear
much earlier in life in India, meaning that chronic long-term complications
are becoming more common. The implications for the Indian healthcare system
are enormous.